Muslims ‘in constant fear’ amid hate campaign in India’s Himachal Pradesh

Shimla, India – Farhan Khan says he still feels a chill down his spine when he recalls the day an anti-Muslim rally was held in his sleepy town in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh state.

On September 17, the 26-year-old tailor opened his shop in Solan as usual at about 11:30am when two men wearing saffron clothes approached him. One of them recorded the encounter on his mobile phone.

“They pointed the camera at my face, hurling abuses and demanding to know why I had opened my shop. Then, another group of men joined them and they all turned violent,” Farhan told Al Jazeera.

He said he was then “dragged by the crowd” to help identify more Muslim-owned shops in the area. “I identified five or six shops and urged them to close,” he said.

The scenic state of Himachal Pradesh, a popular destination for Indian tourists escaping the brutal summer and autumn heat of northern India, has been on edge for more than a month after far-right Hindu groups demanded the demolition of a mosque in the state capital, Shimla. That demand soon morphed into a larger anti-Muslim campaign aimed at instituting an economic boycott against them and even included calls to drive Muslims out of the state.

‘Locked myself in house for two days’

According to a report in The Hindu newspaper, a clash between a Shimla resident and some labourers in Shimla district’s Sanjauli town over the payment of wages on August 31 snowballed into religious tensions within days.

On September 10, residents in Sanjauli, led by some Hindu groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), gathered outside the five-storey mosque in the middle of the town, claiming it was an illegal construction and therefore should be demolished.

The VHP is a member of a nationwide network of right-wing Hindu groups, spearheaded by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Association or RSS), a secretive paramilitary organisation formed 100 years ago which advocates for the conversion of a constitutionally secular India into a Hindu state. The RSS is also the ideological fountainhead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and counts him among its millions of lifetime members across and outside India.

The campaign against the Sanjauli mosque soon turned into broader anti-Muslim protests across Himachal Pradesh, a state where only 2 percent of the population is Muslim and where religious hatred on such a scale has not previously been seen, unlike several other north Indian states.

On September 11, a day after the demonstrations outside the mosque, Hindu groups marched from neighbouring Malyana town to Sanjauli and submitted a list of demands, including removing all “illegal” migrant workers and “illegal” mosques and other religious structures belonging to Muslims. The next day, in an apparently conciliatory move aimed at defusing tensions, the mosque’s management handed a letter to the municipal commissioner, asking him to seal the allegedly illegal part of the building.

Meanwhile, rallies were held across Himachal Pradesh. They included hate speeches against Muslims and calls to boycott their businesses, to stop hiring them as workers and to avoid renting houses to them, Amid widespread fear within the community, many have fled the state. 

“My Hindu landlord is a good man but he asked me to vacate the shop as soon as possible since he was being pressured by the Hindu outfits,” Farhan told Al Jazeera, adding that close to 50 other Muslim migrants had left for their hometowns in other states.

Police officers guard the mosque in Sanjauli [Samriddhi Sakunia/Al Jazeera]

Farhan, speaking by telephone from his hometown of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh state, said he had no intention of returning to Himachal Pradesh since he “valued his life more than his livelihood”.

“I remember locking myself inside my house for two straight days, adding two locks to the door for safety before I finally left for Moradabad on September 19,” he said.

Identifying workers, vendors by religion

In a move that worsened the fear and insecurity among Muslims, the opposition Congress-led government in Himachal Pradesh last month made it mandatory for restaurants and roadside food stalls to display the names of their employees.

The government claimed the order was for the “convenience” of customers, but critics allege the idea behind such a move is to help Hindus from privileged caste groups avoid food prepared or served by Muslim workers.

The announcement came a day after the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where nearly 20 percent of the residents are Muslims, issued a similar order – both states in defiance of a July Supreme Court order that ruled that such policies facilitate discrimination on the grounds of religion and caste.

The Congress – which presents itself as a party opposed to the BJP’s alleged polarisation tactics – was forced to withdraw the order on September 26, about 24 hours after a minister had made the announcement.

Still, earlier this month, videos and photographs circulated on social media showed members of Hindu groups distributing pamphlets to street vendors in Sanjauli and other parts of Shimla, asking them to put up signboards saying: “Sanatani Vegetable Seller”. “Sanatan” in Sanskrit means eternal, and “Sanatan Dharm” (eternal religion) is used to describe Hinduism by right-wing Hindus.

Many vendors now display the pamphlets in shops across the city.

Nearly 3km (2 miles) away from the Sanjauli mosque lies the Idgah Colony, a neighbourhood housing mostly Muslim migrant workers. Among them is Hamza*, originally from the eastern West Bengal state.

The Idgah Colony in Sanjauli, home to many Muslim migrant workers [Samriddhi Sakunia/Al Jazeera]

Hamza has worked as a house painter for the last 15 years and typically spends seven months in Shimla every year.

“In all my years working in this state, I have never faced the kind of discrimination I am dealing with now,” Hamza told Al Jazeera. “People are asking for our names to figure out our religion before deciding whether or not to give us work.”

When Al Jazeera asked Pawan Khera, national spokesman of the Congress, about Muslims living in fear in Himachal Pradesh and being forced to flee, he only said the state government is “committed to upholding the constitution of India and will ensure the safety and freedom of religion for all communities”.

Al Jazeera reached out to multiple Congress spokespersons on the insecurity among Muslims in the state and its retracted order on restaurants displaying the names of its employees, but did not receive a response.

Flashpoint mosque

Mehfooz Malik, 52, migrated to Shimla from Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district in 1986 with nothing but the clothes on his back. He started as a daily wage worker and now runs a small grocery shop in Sanjauli’s Idgah Colony to support his family of four – his wife and two sons.

For 38 years, he said, he had been praying at the Sanjauli mosque, but he is too afraid to go there now.

“The city where my family and I spent the most important years of our lives suddenly feels so unfamiliar. I don’t think I belong here any more,” Malik told Al Jazeera, adjusting his plastic chair outside his store.

“Once my younger son finishes school next year, I am leaving this city for good. Who would want to live in constant fear, always wondering what might happen to you or your family? I certainly don’t.”

Mehfooz Malik outside his grocery store in Idgah Colony [Samriddhi Sakunia/Al Jazeera]

Malik said if the protest was only against the illegal construction inside the mosque, the demonstrations should have stopped the day the Muslim committee offered to seal the allegedly illegal part of the structure to de-escalate the tensions. But he said he believed the protests by Hindu groups had a larger objective.

“The goal is to spread fear and distress among the minorities,” he said.

On October 5, the Shimla Municipal Court ordered the demolition of three unauthorised storeys of the mosque and gave two months to the Waqf Board, the body that administers most mosques across India, to execute the order.

However, two Muslim groups in Himachal Pradesh are at odds with each other over the demolition. The All Himachal Muslim Organisation (AHMO) plans to challenge the municipal court’s order in a higher court while the Sanjauli mosque committee has already consented to demolish the building’s disputed floors.

Tikender Panwar, former deputy mayor of Shimla from the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), said such campaigns by Hindu groups are a “systematic attempt to destabilise” the Himachal Pradesh government and “disturb the communal harmony”.

“It is a game plan for the larger picture,” he said. “It is being done at the behest of the RSS. There are illegal religious constructions at both forest and government lands which show that the mosque issue wasn’t about its legality but to flare up communal disturbances.”

Kamal Gautam is a former general-secretary of the right-wing Hindu Jagran Manch, which has been at the forefront of the recent anti-Muslim demonstrations in Himachal Pradesh. He has been seen raising provocative slogans at such rallies and on social media.

“These rallies are not intended to cause division but to raise awareness. If local Muslims feel otherwise, it’s time for them to pick a side – will it be with us, the local Hindus, or with the Muslim migrants?” he told Al Jazeera.

“In the past 5-10 years, we have seen the changes. These migrants have radicalised local Muslims. You can see a visible change in their attire now. They used to wear jeans and shirts but now they have shifted to kurta [long, collarless tunic] and burqas [face veils for women],” he added.

Hamza, the painter, said he was “deeply saddened” that something as personal as religion now dictated his ability to earn a living in the state. He said he had been struggling to find regular work in recent weeks. From making 600 rupees ($7) for a day’s work, he claimed he can barely make 300 rupees ($3) now.

“I feel like I will also have to leave Himachal soon. They are not offering us work. How can I earn and send money back to my family?” he asked. “This country belongs to me as much as it belongs to anyone else. It’s so painful to be labelled as illegal migrants.”

Hamza warned that workers from Himachal Pradesh could also face problems in other parts of India if such hate campaigns continue.

“If we must leave, we will. We can find work elsewhere. But people in Himachal need to remember that locals from here also migrate to other parts of the country for work. One day, someone might tell them to leave, too. If this hatred continues, it will never end,” he said.

Shopkeeper Malik said he had lost hope for peace returning to Shimla soon, and was convinced that hate will only continue to grow.

“When the peace is disrupted by communal hatred, it can never fully return. The hate lingers in people’s hearts forever,” he told Al Jazeera.

* Name changed to protect the identity